Secret Histories...

A lot of what the impending Obama administration is promising reminds me not-inconsiderably of the New Deal. Which led me to local historian Gray Brechin's excellent site on California's remaining New Deal projects, and this interesting article in New Geography magazine about how they aren't always easy to find. Or rather, the wall or the bridge or the park may still there, but the history of its origins are largely forgotten:

"Since the New Deal agencies were all about centralization, I thought, I would find their records neatly filed back in Washington at the National Archives and Library of Congress.

I was wrong on all counts. I discovered, instead, a strange civilization buried beneath strata of forgetfulness, neglect, and even malice seventy-five years deep. Aborted by the Second World War, FDR’s sudden death, then covered with the congealed lava of the McCarthy reaction, the half dozen or so agencies that had created the physical and cultural infrastructure from which grew America’s post-war prosperity left few accessible records of their collective accomplishments."

San Francisco, and the Bay Area in general, appear to have been major beneficaries of the New Deal. Why, I wonder? Is it because we were such a huge union town then, and FDR or someone in his administration had some favors to repay?